Two important corrections to how this is being reported

First, “died in committee” is doing a lot of concealing. In a two-year New York session, a bill sitting in committee on September 15, 2026 has not died — it expires December 31, 2026. Several of these remain technically alive in Senate Rules, which is where bills wait for a possible return: S7432 (pesticides and sprinklers), S7541 (inspection disclosure) and S8912 (co-op governance).

And several got much further than the label suggests. S8912 reached a floor calendar with a unanimous committee vote. S7541 passed a chamber 58–1. S5089 passed the Senate unanimously in two consecutive years — 60–0 on April 30, 2025 and 61–0 on March 18, 2026 — and the Assembly has never voted on it.²

Second, the trade press has repeatedly called pending bills laws. One February 2026 piece was headlined around four New York state laws affecting co-ops and condos and listed S6346, S8912, S5089 and S2433A. Checked against the official record, none of the four is law. Two are in committee, one died on the calendar, and the ground-lease bill failed again.

Two other pieces that rank highly in searches for New York condominium legislation are a decade or two old — one from June 2006 and one from June 2016 — and both read as current. A New York legislative summary that does not give a chapter number warrants scepticism.

What the pattern is, stated as an inference rather than a fact

Two things are simultaneously true about New York in 2025–2026, and they point in opposite directions.

Bills limiting what an association may restrict got the furthest. The landscaping bill passed both houses. The religious-items bill passed 141–0 and 60–1. The pesticide bill cleared committee with bipartisan support. These are bills that tell a board what it may not forbid.

Bills regulating how a board operates got nowhere near enactment. The ombudsperson, the reserve mandates, the budget-approval transfer, the managing-agent removal power, the inspection disclosure — all stalled, several without a single committee vote.

A defence-side Long Island firm has been making the case that this amounts to a trend toward “greater government oversight of community associations and less independence for boards to manage their own communities,” arguing that legislative solutions “often wind up having the opposite effect of their intentions.”³

We would grade that as reasonable inference rather than established fact. The direction of the proposals is real and documented. The direction of the outcomes is that association governance in New York remains almost entirely a matter of private documents.

What is genuinely absent, stated affirmatively

Because a reader deserves to know what we looked for and did not find:

There is no New York common-interest-community act, and no bill proposing one. A title and summary search of the entire 2025–2026 session for that phrase returns nothing. No HOA reform act, no uniform act, not even as an introduced bill. The nearest analogues are S1177 on developer turnover of control and the competing “rights act” fragments, and all of them died without a floor vote.

New York still does not license community association managers. CAI's own page on the subject is dated December 2021 and discusses a 2021 bill that failed, noting that “Manager licensing legislation has been introduced in the state for at least the past 10 years.” We could not identify a live 2026 manager-licensing bill. Anyone claiming one should be asked for the number.⁴

No Florida-style milestone structural inspection mandate exists or is proposed. Only the reserve-study bills, which are disclosure and funding measures rather than inspection mandates.

No New York legislative commission, task force or interim study on community associations. The only relevant hearing we could identify was the routine February 2026 joint legislative budget hearing on housing, and we found no evidence of condominium- or HOA-specific testimony.

And no state law on flag display, political signs, assistance animals, smoking, artificial turf, transfer fees, fine caps or architectural review in associations. New York has existing protections for solar under Real Property Law § 342 and EV charging under § 343, and nothing else in this family.

What New York did enact

Three things, and they are the whole of the change:

Ninety days' notice before foreclosing a lien for unpaid common charges — RPAPL § 2010 for an incorporated homeowners association and a parallel provision in Real Property Law § 339-aa for condominiums, in force since October 16, 2025 and applying to actions commenced since.

A duty to strip unlawful discriminatory covenants from recorded documents — Real Property Law § 327-a subdivision 3, in force since June 3, 2026, with a one-year deadline and no owner vote required or permitted.

A rewritten neighbour-access statute — RPAPL § 881, overhauled for the first time since 1968.

Everything else reaching New York associations in this window arrived through the Condominium Act, the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law, the Uniform Code, the Tax Law or the New York City Administrative Code — not through anything anyone would call HOA legislation. Our New York governing statute page sets out that patchwork, and our mediation and dispute resolution page covers what an owner in a governance dispute actually has, which is what the ombudsperson bill was written to change.

One thing to watch this autumn

The 2026 veto season has not started. As of today there are six 2026 vetoes and all six are budget line items — no policy bill of any kind has been vetoed in 2026. The Legislature's last floor actions were in early June, 2026 chapters stand at 296 against 714 for all of 2025, and bills are only now being walked to the Governor.

Which means the two association bills that passed both houses — the landscaping bill and the religious-items bill — will be delivered, and decided, between roughly October and the end of December 2026. Based on the verified 2025 pattern in the landscaping bill's own family, that is when this story changes.